Scholars pay tributes to Allama Iqbal

Islamabad : Scholars and academicians from home and abroad at a two-day Int’l conference held here on Wednesday paid glowing tributes to Dr. Allama Mohammad Iqbal for his Universal thoughts for the humanity.

The conference was arranged by Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) on the occasion of his 81st death anniversary. It was largely participated by delegates including those from Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Sweden.

The inaugural session was addressed by eminent scholars including Prof. Dr. Tahseen Faraqi, Dr. Moeenuddin Aqeel, Prof. Dr. Fateha Mohammad Malik and Iftikhar Arif, who deliberated upon the conference’s main topic “Iqbal’s intellectual and Artistic Universality’.

They highlighted various dimensions and aspects of Dr. Iqbal’s universal message and said this provides solution to the present days’ socio-economic problems, and it is relevant for all times to come.

Welcoming the participants, Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Zia-Ul-Qayyum hoped that the conferences’ deliberations will be a source of inspirations for developing a society, as was conceived by Dr. Iqbal. He thanked the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for its support in arranging the event.

He vowed to develop the University as a platform for projecting the message of their national heroes among the young generation. The University will encourage holding research-based dialogue on the intellectual and visionary thoughts of Dr. Iqbal.

The University will do its best for educating the youth in the line with the farsighted thoughts of the great Muslim scholar. Nation is indebted to his dream and scholarly contributions for creating a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Sub-continent, the VC added.

The speakers in their papers presented at the inaugural and the follow-up parallel sessions said Allama Iqbal was not just the poet of the East but of entire humanity.

They observed that Iqbal believes in human dignity and freedom. Iqbal’s concept of ‘khudi’ (self-realisation, self-awareness, and self-assertion) is the concept of human rights. Iqbal was a humanist and he presented a new social order for the whole world based on spiritual democracy and basic human values. His main concern was to awaken the Muslim Ummah through his philosophy of ‘khudi’ and self-respect, they observed. Iqbal advises Muslim youth to explore themselves in the field of science and technology.